lien@osu-eddie.UUCP (02/03/87)
From: Yao-Nan Lien <lien>
We are looking for the solutions to fill the gap between a x2700 laser
printer and a poor slow dot matrix printer -- LA100. The demand
is a mix of typesetting output, letter quality plain English
output, program listing, .. etc. The estimated load is about 1000 pages
per day. Currently, a large portion of the jobs go to x2700 such that
it is heavily overloaded. We cannot afford another x2700 so that
we are looking for the alternatives that are cheaper than x2700
but are better than LA100 that can satisfy our short term demand.
Some alternatives are considered:
1. A single high speed dot matrix printer that supports all types of
jobs. (The cost of printer maintenance, ie., ribbon
changing,..etc, may be high for large volume service .)
2. A high speed dot matrix printer to support regular printing
jobs ( don't need letter quality) and a smaller printer compatible
with the larger one to support higher quality printing. (One piece
of software can be used in both printers.)
3. Similar to 2. but with a low end laser printer supporting
Postscript such as Laserwriter or Laserjet.
4. Other alternatives.
The high speed line printer we are going to buy may be c.itoh's CI-600.
The question is that should we buy a small one ( alternative 2
and 3) or not? If yes, which alternative is more cost-effective
and trouble free? ( For example, we cannot wait one year or so for a
software driver to allow ditroff to drive the printer.)
The budget will be around a couple of thousands dollars per year.
Together with the printer problem is the typesetting software problem.
To support typesetting jobs on these printers is one of our major
concerns. It seems to me that TeX may have no problem
for any solution we come up. There may have problems for 'Scribe' and
'n/troff'.
I don't know the solutions for 'Scribe', while we do have
some alternatives for 'n/troff':
1. Using existing troff software in all heterogeneous systems with
'Transcript' together to get Postscript and getting drivers for all
printers.
2. Buying ditroff for all systems and drivers for all
printers.
3. Buying both ditroff and 'Transcript'.
There is no problem to make a decision if they are all bug free,
supported well,.... However, we don't believe this is the case in real
world. Real experience can help us to avoid stupid decision like we
have done before to buy xroff for x2700. ( It is full of bugs, poor
supported, actually no support, no source code available for self
rescue.)
We are soliciting the advice form the net. Any suggestion will be very
appreciated.
------------------------------------------------------------
Yao-Nan Lien
Department of Computer and Information Science
Ohio State University
2036, Neil Ave. Mall
Columbus, Ohio 43210-1277
Tel 614 292-5236
CSNet : lien@ohio-state.CSNET
Arpa : lien@ohio-state.arpa
UUCP : {cbosgd, ihnp4}!osu-eddie!lien